A young surf lifesaver-turned-sprinter says a brush with the mentor of the world's fastest man has given him the hunger and discipline to go far in his chosen sport.

Tjimarri Sanderson-Milera is part of a new wave of South Australian sprinters and is currently preparing for the state's most famous foot race, the Bay Sheffield.

The 20-year-old will start off a handicap of 7.5 metres in the heats of the 120m sprint, which will be run for the 127th time at Glenelg's Colley Reserve on Proclamation Day.

Earlier this year, he travelled to the Caribbean to train with Jamaican national coach Maurice Wilson, a mentor to Olympic champion and 100 metres world record holder Usain Bolt.

"It was an eye-opener, the way they train, how hard they train. It definitely made me want to train even more and all that stuff," he said.

"I found what I brought back from Jamaica has made me a better athlete already."

The youngster's talent was spotted by Grange running coach Peter Burdett, who hopes Sanderson-Milera continues the tradition of young athletes swapping sand and surf for successful track careers.

A note on the name'Sheffield' is the name for a handicap sprint race, after the English city in which one of the first such events was held in the 19th century.

"When TJ came back [from Jamaica] he was pumped. He wanted to get straight back into training and brought a lot of stuff back which we implemented straight away," he said.

That included new "training regimes, gym work and a lot more plyometrics in our training."

"The lifesaving community have really taken hold of the pro-running circuit as well and that's where a lot of juniors have come from."

Organisers hoping to get running back on track

More than 850 athletes will take part in the two-day Bay Sheffield carnival, including a record 75 entrants for the Women's Gift, with a total of $57,000 in prize money up for grabs.

Organisers say while ball sports have traditionally lured many talented athletes away from the track, Sanderson-Milera is one of a growing number of young sprinters who have decided to stay.

"The issue used to be Little Athletics had this enormous participation base and once the kids got to 12 years old, they'd get bored with it and they'd go and played basketball, football or cricket or whatever it was," said South Australian Athletics League (SAAL) president Brendan Golden.

To address the challenge, the league added Under-14 and Under-17 events to its programs which it says have seen a significant increase in participation and Bay Sheffield entrants over the past few years.

"South Australia is the first state in Australia to do it," Golden said.

"Victoria is slowly doing it this season for the first time but we really do have a goal of rolling out the program that we've been doing, and rolling that out nationally.

"Once we do that ... the sport will get a really decent national profile and then once that happens, we think the snowball effect will happen with kids coming into the sport Australia-wide."

Sanderson-Milera is hoping to follow in the footsteps of former stable mate and two-time Bay Sheffield winner Jordan Caldow, who will return to South Australia from Queensland to compete in the race.